GF Russian Resource Library

Phrases are mostly built from Utterances (Utt), which in turn are declarative sentences,
questions, or imperatives - but there are also ”one-word utterances” consisting
of noun phrases or other subsentential phrases. Some Phrases are atomic, for
instance ”yes” and ”no”. Here are some examples of Phrases.
yes
come on, John
but John walks
give me the stick please
don’t you know that he is sleeping
a glass of wine
a glass of wine please
There is no connection between the punctuation marks and the types of utterances.
This reflects the fact that the punctuation mark in a real text is selected as a
function of the speech act rather than the grammatical form of an utterance. The
following text is thus well-formed.
John walks. John walks? John walks!
What is the difference between Phrase and Utterance? Just technical: a Phrase is
an Utterance with an optional leading conjunction (”but”) and an optional tailing
vocative (”John”, ”please”).
2.2 Sentences and clauses
The richest of the categories below Utterance is S, Sentence. A Sentence is formed
from a Clause (Cl), by fixing its Tense, Anteriority, and Polarity. For example, each
of the following strings has a distinct syntax tree in the category Sentence:
John walks
John doesn’t walk
John walked
John didn’t walk
John has walked
John hasn’t walked
John will walk
John won’t walk
...
whereas in the category Clause all of them are just different forms of the same tree.
The difference between Sentence and Clause is thus also rather technical. It may
not correspond exactly to any standard usage of the terms ”sentence” and ”clause”.
Fig.3 shows a type-annotated syntax tree of the Text ”John walks.” and gives
an overview of the structural levels.
Here are some examples of the results of changing constructors.
1. TFullStop -> TQuestMark John walks?
3. NoPConj -> but_PConj But John walks.
6. TPres -> TPast John walked.
7. ASimul -> AAnter John has walked.
8. PPos -> PNeg John doesn’t walk.
11. john_PN -> mary_PN Mary walks.
13. walk_V -> sleep_V John sleeps.
14. NoVoc -> please_Voc John sleeps please.
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